


Enemy at the Gate

by Jael



Series: Enemy Mine [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Complicated Plans, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Humor, Romance, Switching Sides, Time Loop, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-18 10:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8159578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jael/pseuds/Jael
Summary: When Leonard Snart defects back to the Legends of Tomorrow, Sara Lance has some explaining to do. But when the team learns what the Legion of Doom has been working toward all along, what price will its members--especially Sara and Leonard--have to pay to stop them? Sequel to "Enemy of Mine Enemy" and "Sleeping with the Enemy."





	1. Chosen

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to "Enemy of Mine Enemy" and "Sleeping with the Enemy." Expect eight chapters and an epilogue.
> 
> Thanks to LarielRomeniel for the beta and many good suggestions!

Leonard Snart will be the first to admit he doesn't know what the hell he's doing here.

He certainly didn't intend to let things get this...complicated.

Oh, they didn't start out that way. If a very, very attractive member of the opposition...one he already respected more than his own so-called "team" for her fighting skills alone...wanted to blow off some steam after an impromptu team-up, hey, who was he to argue? He's not usually one for that sort of thing—not at all--but she'd gotten under his skin for some reason and after all, she'd jumped him _first_.

But it didn't stay simple.

She stayed in his thoughts. Under his skin, more than just a fond physical memory. He's not sure why. This is not _him_ , this is not how he operates. At least, it never has been.

But, damn it, he can't stop thinking about her. Not just the fairly mind-blowing physical encounter. The way she fights, the way she moves. The way she'd looked at him, like he was _more_...

When they're given the unexpected chance to...continue things, she seems to be just as, as…hmm…preoccupied by him as he is by her. Which is surprising, and unnerving, and addicting…

And as time goes by, and he just can't seem to walk away, and he just finds her _more_ intriguing, _more_ fascinating, he wonders if he's…if he's…could he be falling in love?

He's uneasily sure he is, actually, which is disturbing as hell. He didn't believe he was capable of that. Wasn't even sure such a thing really existed outside of fiction.

And it turns out "falling" is a good word for it. There's no way to catch himself; it's as inevitable as gravity. He's _falling_.

And the only question is when he's going to hit the ground.

* * *

" _What_ did you say?"

Leonard keeps the tone cool, the comment delivered in his usual drawl, but only barely.

It's been three weeks since he'd been shot during what should have been a simple heist. (At least Thawne had been off his case during his recovery, given that they _did_ get the artifact they'd been there for.) While the ship's medical facilities have gotten the wound well on the way to recovery (somewhat impressive, really), he's still confined there, in 2013, "for his own good," something that's increasingly pissing him off...and increased time spent with his three so-called teammates has him about ready to freeze all three of them.

Especially now, here, waiting on the ship for Thawne—how can a time-traveling speedster be so perpetually late?--to arrive. Their "leader" had requested (demanded, rather) a meeting, with foreboding hints of plans to be disclosed, and as much as he'd like to be elsewhere just to prove that Thawne is not, well, the boss of him, it seems a good idea to know what the man is up to.

But this...

Merlyn lifts an eyebrow at him, smirks a little, glances at the bored-looking Darhk, then back at him.

"How...incurious...of you, Snart. You've never noticed how the little White Canary looks at Damien here like she'd like to use his guts as a garrote?"

"Doesn't everyone look at Darhk that way?" _Don't act_ too _interested..._

"Well. True enough." Merlyn smirks a little more. "But a future...for him, anyway...version killed her sister a few years from now. Isn't time travel interesting? Now she can't murder him without completely undoing the timeline she's supposed to be protecting. What torture." He shakes his head, reeking of insincerity. "One might almost feel sorry for her."

The sister. Oh, holy hell. The sibling it was so patently obvious Sara had lost, from the look on her face when he'd asked, what seems to be an eternity ago.

And he's _working_ with the man.

The expression on his face feels frozen, but neither of them seems to notice. Darhk simply gives Merlyn a _look_ , making a disparaging noise.

"That family tree needs pruning," he says with distaste. "If the sister was anywhere near as...inconvenient...as the one in white, I can see why. I'll do _that_ job as soon as Thawne gives the OK."

"I wish you luck with that," Merlyn says, and laughs. "I gave it a try once, after all, and it didn't stick."

_What?_

He's never, ever had to keep the mask in place more than he has this moment. And it's never, ever been more difficult.

He merely lifts an eyebrow. A clear question.

"I told you she'd been dead for a year." Merlyn seems amused. "I can't say I fired the arrows personally, but, well…"

It's just as well, probably, that Thawne arrives at that moment, a blur zipping onto the bridge, interrupting the words and drawing the attention of the others.

"It's time to move into the final phase of the plan," he proclaims, eyes gleaming as Merlyn and Darhk focus on him...and the team thief appears to.

Because, as the speedster starts to hold forth, Leonard closes his eyes, fights the red out of his vision, throttles the rage-usually kept under such tight wraps-out of his expression and, for when it will be necessary, his voice.

He hasn't been very...invested...in Thawne's master plan here. He'd been recruited to steal, for himself and for Thawne, and that's all he'd cared about-right up until Sara Lance had held a knife to his throat 14 years in the future and woken something in him he didn't think existed.

Sure, the man had offered him a chance to change a piece of his past, somehow, and he's toyed with the notion, but even with all he's seen in the last few months, he finds it hard to believe that's even possible. And for once, for once...

Maybe he's more curious to see what the _future_ holds.

And so he listens. He keeps the mask on.

He does exactly what's expected of him—drops a good dose of snark, disrespects all three teammates, asks a few pertinent questions and, ultimately, consents to stealing what he's being asked to steal.

And as he walks away, he knows what he has to do.

_Time to chose a side, I guess._

" _Chosen_ ," he mutters to himself as he stalks toward the quarters that are, nominally, his. " _Chosen_."

* * *

As he leaves, the other three members of the Legion watch him go. Merlyn shakes his head, smiling.

"I think our crow is about to fly," he observes.

"Yes. Right to his canary." Thawne's smile is right out of a horror movie. "Now, to make sure they're back in 2013 when he does. Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen."

And he's gone. Merlyn shakes his head.

"Do you think he does that on purpose?" he asks Darhk, who simply gives him an irritated look and stalks off in the opposite direction.

"Never mind."

* * *

Sara hasn't seen Leonard in three weeks. Twenty-two days, actually, but who's counting?

The timeline is stable. Gideon swears it is. He's alive. They've crossed paths with other Legion members sporadically…still engaged in the seemingly random timeline-twisting they've been messing with for the past six months...but there's been no sign of the crook, no mention, no clue.

It's a tiny little slice of hell, really, the not knowing, and it's made her short with her teammates, perhaps a little bit reckless on missions. Amaya knows, of course, and keeps trying to instigate a heart-to-heart, but Sara's not too inclined to talk about it. She's trying not to think much at all, actually, knowing that her words, her actions may have damaged things in the first place.

So she keeps to herself.

And when things change, suddenly, she doesn't even see it coming.

She's been out on a mission with Mick, Jax, Stein and Rip, investigating a blip in the timeline that had turned out to be something embarrassingly innocuous: rather than a renegade Time Master, a journal once belonging to a Time Master that turned out to feature far more soft-core porn than any amount of real timeline information. They'd left it with its happy owner (who'd picked it up at a used book sale) and withdrawn, somewhat sheepishly, to head back to the Waverider in mingled amusement and embarrassment.

Sara is walking toward the ship, lost in her own thoughts, and it's Jax who first spots the vintage convertible parked not far from the cloaked Waverider...and the man slumped in the driver's seat.

"Hey...wait...is that _Snart_?"

The words register through her tangle of thoughts and she stops in her tracks.

But the others get there first.

The man in question blinks as they converge around the car, eyes flickering open as he peers at the heroes who've congregated around him. Rip has his hand on his gun and Mick, with an air of reluctance, does the same. Jax edges closer to Stein...moving aside as Sara pushes through.

But when she catches the first glimpse of bright red on the towel wrapped around his left forearm, she sucks in a breath, and his eyes fly to her face.

"Sara."

Her face actually heats at the tone of his voice and, really, you'd have to be deaf and blind not to hear what's there, to see the look in his eyes. And none of her teammates are either of those things. Stein's eyes cut to her immediately; so do Rip's. Jax looks baffled an instant before looking horrified.

Mick is the one who takes pity on her.

"Snart," he barks, "what's going on? What the hell happened to you?"

The man in the car blinks for a second, as if readjusting, then moves his towel-wrapped arm and winces.

"I'm...defecting," he says eventually. "To your side. I have information. And some...skills that might prove useful. And this car, which I'm told is a collector's item."

"You seem," Stein observes, peering at it, "to have ruined the upholstery."

"That's OK." Smirk. "It's Darhk's."

Mick laughs before he can think better of it, then glances at the still-speechless Sara and says, gruffly, "What the hell happened?"

"Thawne had a tracker implanted at some point. Don't know when," Snart says shortly. "But while I might not be short on scars, I figured out which one wasn't supposed to be there. It's gone now. Although I may not have done a very good job."

There's a fresh bloom of bright red joining the darker red on the improvised bandage, and he's wincing in pain again. Their captain makes the call, for which Sara is really quite grateful.

"Get him into the Waverider," Rip orders. "Have Gideon stop the bleeding, see if he's right. Replace the blood lost; he's downright...loopy, for lack of a better word. Then: everyone else on the bridge. We need a team meeting."

He's looking at Sara, who looks away. Time to pay the piper, she thinks.

But she can't help it.

Leonard is here. Alive. On the side of the angels, sort of. And about to be back on the Waverider, with her.

It's worth smiling about.


	2. So, That's It

Mick helps her get him to the medbay, then withdraws, just a little, hovering just outside the door. While she can't blame him for his caution, she does appreciate the concern, and the moral support.

"What the hell were you thinking?" she asks Leonard.

"It was your idea. Well. The knives were, anyway."

"I wasn't serious!" She hisses as she moves the towels aside, fingers dyed red with his blood. "You cut something out of your own arm? You could have bled to death out there, you idiot!"

"It seemed like the best idea at the time. But it's not like I have a medical degree; I think I nicked something," he muses, staring abstractly at the insides of his own arm. Definitely loopy. "The knife was very sharp, though. I used one I stole off you that night."

So that's where that knife went. She'd suspected as much.

"I didn't really recommend do-it-yourself surgery." She eases his arm into the bedside cradle that's Gideon's best option for repairing more minor limb injuries before belatedly asking, "Gideon? Any sign of a tracking device?"

"A cursory scan shows no sign of one, Miss Lance," the AI informs her. "I can do a more in-depth scan after this repair is finished. "

Leonard blinks. "This ship is a lot more advanced than Thawne's," he muses before blinking again and refocusing on her. "Sara, listen. You didn't tell me about Merlyn. And Dahrk and your sister..."

_Laurel..._

"You bailed because of that?"

"Yes. Well, partly. But there's more. They want me to..."

But his eyelids are drooping. She sucks in a breath, concerned, but Gideon anticipates her question.

"I've had to administer a minor sedative, Ms. Lance," the AI informs her. "The repair, however, will not take long."

"Thank you. Gideon, keep an eye on him, please." She hesitates a moment, then leans forward and brushes her lips across his forehead before straightening with a sigh.

And then she goes to face the music.

* * *

The conversation dies when she walks on to the bridge, every eye turned toward her. She'd have thought she was well past any sort of public embarrassment, over anything, really...but this is a little different.

It's Mick, predictably, who first says it, putting into words what they've all been thinking.

"Damn, Blondie," he says, sounding amazed and vaguely admiring, "you've been _banging_ Snart? You don't really do things by halves, do you?"

"Hey, we don't know that that's the case!" Ray objects, then catches the look on Sara's face. "Oh. It is, isn't it? Um."

Rip is in full beleaguered Time Dad mode, and she supposes she can't really blame him. He paces a moment, back, forth, and runs a hand through his hair before turning to face her.

"I'm not going to repeat all the warnings I've given about Mr. Snart and the timeline and this team. It's too bloody late, apparently. But. I would like to know," he asks, carefully, "when did all this start?"

Sara lets out a long breath, sitting down in a jump seat and pulling her legs up to wrap her arms around them. If she's going to feel like she's on trial, she may at least be sitting down.

"The compound. In Ohio. After Amaya and Ray left. He was stuck there too." She sighs. "We teamed up."

"Oh, is _that_ what they're calling it these days?" Rip in full snark can rival Snart at his finest. "Sara! What were you _thinking_? Oh, that's right! You weren't!" He turns to the rest of the team. "Did anyone else know about this?"

Silence. Then...

"I did."

Amaya's voice is small and strong, and Sara feels a rush of affection for her friend. The JSA member stands there, arms folded, an obdurate look on her face.

"I told Sara that I would say something if I saw any damage, and I did not," she says. "He will have to forget anyway. You have said this. Why should she not have something that she had thought forever lost? There is little enough of that possible in this world. You know that, as do I."

Sara feels tears come to her eyes and blinks them away rapidly. Amaya smiles at her, then starts as Mick, who's moved to her side, bumps her shoulder with his in support.

Rip deflates a trifle at the realization that the woman who may, possibly, be considered the most responsible member of the team—including himself-has been privy to this. Still, he shakes his head. There is compassion in his eyes, and she can't help but see it, and somehow that makes things worse.

"You say he will just have to forget anyway," he tells her. "And that _is_ true. But this means it may be much more difficult to make him forget. Those amnesia pills aren't bloody candy; things can break through. And he already has a span of months that are going to need to be wiped out without adding...emotions, the very hardest things to suppress...to the mix. And given that he's tracked you down here and gone through some physical duress to do so, those seem to be some very strong emotions indeed."

She feels the tears pricking at her eyes again. "So...then what do we do now? I can't undo it. I wouldn't if I could."

Rip sighs and leans against the seat next to her. "I don't know," he admits. "Gideon still says things are on track. But then, even I don't know how that can be anymore." His mouth twitches. "If you asked the Time Masters who trained me, frankly, we'd all be utter drop-outs at this point. Honestly, I'm starting to believe the timeline is far more resilient than they ever said it was.

"That said, he's going to need to forget, Sara, to go back to his normal life in 2013 so I can recruit the Leonard Snart you first met in 2016. It has to happen, because it already has. Or everything will start to unravel."

For a long moment, they're all silent, contemplating that.

And into the silence drops a very familiar drawl.

"Soooooo, that's it."

Slowly, she turns to see Leonard, leaning against the doorway like he had so many, many times before, arm wrapped in a new, white bandage. He looks right at her, face expressionless, then turns his head to look at Mick for a long moment, then Rip, then back to her.

"So. That's it," he repeats. "That explains a lot of things, actually. I'd started to put a few of them together, but it's good to have some...confirmation..."

"And how did you leave the medbay?" Rip says, his eyes still closed.

A thin smile. "I asked nicely."

"And Gideon reverted to prior programming and let you. Of course." Rip sounds resigned. What else can he do at this point?

Snart ignores him. "I thought it was odd," he muses, "that you hired Mick. But Mick came with me...future me...didn't he? So where am _I_?" He straightens, then, and starts into the room, weaving through his former teammates like a cat, heading for Sara.

She tenses...but he doesn't press the question. Yet.

He stops in front of Mick and meets the other man's eyes in what seems like a challenge. But this is a very different Mick Rory, who simply raises his eyebrows and stares back. Amaya, for her part, looks like she's going to claw his eyes out if he so much as twitches. He lifts an eyebrow at her, smiles a little, and keeps going.

Stein and Jax get a quizzical look; Ray, a roll of the eyes; Nate, a slight frown. And then he's to Sara. (Rip, he ignores.)

She's not sure what she's expecting, but it isn't what he does. He drops down into a crouch by the jump chair, at a level just a little under hers, and looks at her, unsmiling, his eyes searching hers. For...?

 _Ah_.

She's avoided showing feelings for so long, but now she takes a deep breath and lets everything fill her eyes. The relief. The gratitude. The worry. The attraction, even here, even now. And the pain. The...

He regards her a long, long moment...and then gives her a half-smile, stands, and drops into the jump seat by her side, shoulder brushing against hers, stating his allegiance as clearly as he possibly can by sheer body language.

She closes her eyes and smiles.

She can hear Rip's sigh.

Well," he says. "You're here now, Mr. Snart. I'm not even going to ask 'why,' as you've made that so very obvious. You might as well tell us what's going on with the Legion. Especially if we're going to risk unraveling time itself by your presence here."

Leonard is quiet a moment. "I mostly know the role he wanted _me_ to take," he says slowly. "Which is, as you might be able to figure out, stealing something. But that's only part of the larger goal, and I'm not entirely sure how that's supposed to happen."

"And..?" Rip prompts. Snart gives him an unimpressed look.

"Thawne's goal, he says, is to restore and take control of something called the Oculus." He shrugs. "And I don't know what that is, but if he wants it...it can't be good."


	3. Some Things Never Change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I just want to note that I've been nominated for a few things over at the Captain Canary Fan Fiction and Visual Arts Awards! I'm so honored!
> 
> You can vote at captaincanaryawards.tumblr.com/vote. Please do! There are many talented people nominated.
> 
> And now, on with our story.

If the silence before had been loaded, then this, this silence, is charged beyond belief.

An involuntary noise crosses Sara's lips—she will _not_ call it a whimper—and Leonard shifts abruptly, turning into her almost protectively, eyes searching hers. He opens his mouth to speak...only to turn and stare over her head when Mick releases an abrupt oath.

And then nearly everyone speaks at once.

Rip is just staring at them.

"Oh," he breathes. "Oh, bloody hell."

Leonard actually chuckles.

"I'm taking it you know what that is," he says. "And I'm right. It isn't good."

Rip sort of collapses into his seat. "No, Mr. Snart. No, it is not." He puts a hand over his eyes. "Do you know...do you have any inkling at all...how Thawne thinks he can do this?"

The crook doesn't speak at first. He slouches in the chair next to Sara, eyes moving from team member to team member, looking for all the world like he'd never even left. Finally, he looks back at Rip, lips moving in a humorless smile.

"You're not telling me everything...captain," he drawls.

Rip straightens a little, eyes narrowing. "Put yourself in our shoes," he snaps back. "Would you?"

Unexpectedly, Leonard smiles at the words. "Nope," he says, shrugging and sitting up a little himself. "Wouldn't. OK, then:

"Thawne wanted me to steal your ship's time drive. Said it was necessary for the plan. He also wanted me to figure out a way to steal your AI. He seemed to believe he'd need both those things, and then he was taking us to a place called the Vanishing Point."

The quality of the silence has him looking around him again. "Something _else_ you're not telling me…" he muses. "OK…"

Sara puts her hand on his arm, and he smiles at her, just a little. But his eyes are wary, and she bites her lip to see it.

"Is that even possible?" Ray's voice breaks the silence. "I mean…I thought it was destroyed. It looked…well, it looked pretty well destroyed. In the explos…"

His eyes go to Leonard…most of their eyes do, honestly...but the former Legion member isn't looking at him. He's looking at Mick, who's sidled closer, a frown on his face.

"Stealing Gideon…that shouldn't really be possible either," Mick says. "The AIs are hardwired into the ship systems. Now, we…they teach emergency measures, to salvage the AI in the case of scuttling a ship, but it's not something Thawne should know about—nor something even you should be able to pull off."

Leonard's looking at the other man like he's a dog who suddenly started quoting Shakespeare. "Well, Thawne seemed to think it was possible," he says shortly. "Although, to be honest, I was the one who was supposed to figure it out. I suppose it's possible he was setting me up. I wouldn't trust him any further than I could outrun him."

"How do we know that you're not 'stealing' this ship right now?" Nate pipes up suddenly. "I mean, you're here an hour and we're thinking about taking it to the Vanishing Point...I mean, aren't we? Seems like that would be a pretty effective way to go about things."

Sara's head snaps up and she sucks in a breath. It's not that the historian-turned-hero is completely wrong—it's a rather astute observation, really—but it's hard not to take it personally, given that Leonard is here because of her and her actions. But the crook actually gives the other man a rather approving look before shrugging.

"You don't," he says. "All you can do is take me at my word for now, and make sure you keep track of me. But I can tell you this: I never would have predicted I'd be _here_ now. Or _why_."

He turns his head and looks at Sara, and the heat in his eyes is...she licks her lips, smiles a little, laughing internally a little at the distant sound of Amaya's sigh, Ray's quizzical noise of discomfort, Jax's snicker...

Mick huffs out a laugh, breaking the tension.

"And you two with the eye sex," he says with resignation. "Some things never really change, do they?"

She sees Leonard's head snap around at the big man's words—oh, Mick, _really_?-but Rip, having apparently regained some equilibrium, cuts in smoothly.

"The Vanishing Point...well, it's not impossible. It would no longer be outside of time, because of the destruction of...well...but the wreckage presumably exists." He sounds thoughtful. "I can't believe there'd be anything left of the Wellspring. But I suppose that's something we need to check out, especially how precipitous our departure was last time.

"Gideon. I can't believe I'm saying this, but...set a course for the Vanishing Point."

* * *

Rip has requested that Leonard, with his knowledge of the Legion, and Mick, Stein, Ray, and Sara—those with even the most minor knowledge of temporal theory-convene in his study, so that they can try to figure out what Thawne might be up to. While the crook rolls his eyes at the request—and, cutting his eyes to her, makes it clear what he'd _prefer_ to be doing—he complies readily enough.

Sara watches him walk over to Mick, and mentally wishes her friend luck. Of all of them, Mick Rory has changed the most over the course of this whole venture, and she doesn't envy the path he now has to walk between the Mick-Rory-that-was and the Mick-Rory-that-is, a discrepancy she can see this Leonard poking at until it backfires on him.

And speaking of which...

Before Rip can follow the others, she grabs the captain by the arm, swinging him around to face her and ignoring the irritated look she gets in response.

"Do we tell him?" No need to question _what_.

Rip stares at her a second, then sighs, looking away. When he looks back, there's sadness in his eyes.

"Sara," he says finally. "If he knows he's going to die on the mission, do you really think he'll go?"

"Do you _really_ think he hasn't figured it out? And he's still here."

The captain just shakes his head.

"I don't know. I'm going to be honest, Sara. I don't feel like I know much right now. So much of this seems impossible and yet...here we are." He claps her on the arm, giving her a melancholy smile. "It's ridiculously trite, but...listen to your heart. It's gotten us here, hasn't it? And apparently that is a good thing."

* * *

She stays for a while, but while she can weigh in on some aspects, some possibilities, the talk soon turns to sheer temporal theory, the Time Masters and the nature of the Oculus itself—paired with a good amount of dancing around what specifically caused its destruction and the careful dodging of references to _their_ Leonard.

It's exhausting, and it doesn't take long before she demurs, wishes them luck, and heads for the door. She thinks, for a moment, that Leonard's going to tell the others to go to hell and follow her out, but he doesn't...although his eyes do, and the gaze makes her shiver from head to toe.

It's not a sensation that's particularly conducive to rest.

She works off a bit of the adrenaline of the day sparring with the others (she and Amaya are trying to teach both Jax and Nate a little more in the way of non-super-powered self defense), but they're also trying, so carefully, not to ask about Leonard that that wears on her too. After a while, she bows out and returns to her room, stretching with a sigh and contemplating a hot shower.

Until she hears the drawl behind her.

"So. I'm told there's not a spare room. But they've graciously decided I don't have to stay in the brig, not as long as you're...keeping tabs...on me."

A smile crosses her face as she turns. "How can you make 'keeping tabs' sound so downright filthy?"

"Just gifted, I guess." Leonard saunters into the room, eyes appreciative as he takes in her partially clad form, eventually leaning against the bed in a way that evokes so many memories that she has to glance away for a second. "If you kick me out, I'm supposed to go stay with Mick. I'd rather stay here. What the hell did you people do to him?"

"Hmm. That's his story. It's up to him to tell you."

"Except that he won't."

"Even so." It occurs to her that she could probably completely defuse this by suggesting that shower...

But it's not to be.

Leonard's looking up at her from behind those lashes—those damned lashes, totally unfair—and his next words give her no out.

"So, you...knew...the me from your time. A few years ahead of this _me_. That's what you meant with 'I see you.' You were telling the truth." His voice is low, intense with something she can't quite name.

"I...haven't lied to you."

"Mmmmmm. Then what..." But now he hesitates, looking away, then back at her. "What were _we_? Future _me_ , and you?"

_"...me and you..."_

She's quiet a long moment, collecting her thoughts, and he lets her. Then, she takes a long breath, and says, "Friends."

"Friends?" His eyebrows rise. "Not..."

"No." She hesitates again. "You...made a play. Well, I think it was a play. And I was angry at you. I walked away. And then when I saw you...this _you_..."

He looks at her and she doesn't have a good word for what's in his eyes at that moment.

"So," he says then, calmly, too calmly, "how do I die?"

She'd told Rip he'd figure it out. Still, she can't stop herself from the moment of utter horror, the fear, the pain-and she knows it's all reflected on her face.

He shrugs in response to her expression. "I'm...the man you knew then...he's not here. Everyone is being very careful to not say where he is. And you looked at me like I was a ghost. And you know what? I don't really think I want to know, after all. Not right now. But..." Now she can see the flicker of pain in his eyes. "Is that all it is? Was? Regrets?"

"No!" This time, the word is explosive. "I mean...yes, I have regrets, but...Len, I didn't lie to you. I've lost so many people, so many things over the past year, and you...you were one of them..." She takes a shaky breath, lets it out on a equally shaky, humorless laugh, and continues.

"Yes, I did part of what I did because I missed a chance and I regretted it so much, so very much, that it was killing me. But there was also that connection, like I told you. It was...is...there, and it was every bit as real as it was then, and I just..."

And suddenly, just like that, she knows what to say.

"I miss him," she says quietly, looking him in the eye. "I had started falling in love with him. But...but I finished falling in love with you."

Something has changed in his eyes again, and it's a combination of what she'd seen there, so long ago, as he said the words "me and you," and newer things, including something so fragile and precious that she almost can't believe it. Moving carefully, like he just might scare her off, he straightens a little, then reaches for her as she steps toward him, moving into his arms with a sigh and lifting her mouth to his.

It's like coming home.


	4. Sometimes a Disaster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little shameless self-promotion: I've been nominated for a few things in the first CaptainCanary Fanfiction and Visual Arts Awards! Vote at captaincanaryawards.tumblr.com (backslash) vote.

"You know, Martin, you should really get some rest."

Martin Stein, still studying the equations he's been tinkering with for hours, starts at the words, then shakes his head at the captain, who's paused in the door of his own study.

"This is just fascinating, this tiny bit Gideon has managed to piece together about the Oculus," he tells the other man. "But I can't for the life of me think how Thawne is planning to do this with simply our time drive and Gideon. There's something I have to be missing here."

"True enough. I think there's something we're all missing." The captain shakes his head, then continues into the study, holding up a covered plate.

"I brought you some food," he says with a sigh. "Dr. Palmer was cooking, so it's not half bad. He is currently educating...or trying to educate...Mr. Jackson and Dr. Heywood on the proper use of spices. They did not seem very impressed. Drink?" That said while snagging one of the bottles in his seemingly interminable supply of scotch. Stein nods.

"I don't know where Mr. Snart and Ms. Lance have gotten to; Sara left before I finished telling her about what we might find, navigationally speaking, in the vicinity of the Vanishing Point," Rip continues, pouring two small glasses of the amber liquid. "And neither she nor Mr. Snart were in the galley or the training room. I would rather like to pick Mr. Snart's brain a little more about Thawne's possible motivations." He extends a glass to the scientist with a shake of his head. "The man has been back on the ship _how_ long and he already knows how to disappear?"

Stein accepts with a wry look, then laughs. "Captain...Rip. Where do you _think_ they are?"

Rip pauses in the act of taking a sip of scotch, eyebrows raised in question...and then blinks, a slight smile spreading across his face.

"Good point," he says. "Very good point. Well, then, we could certainly use Mr. Rory's expertise again. The Time Masters taught the minions who were...that they _thought_ were firmly under their collective thumb more in some ways than they taught their so-called trainees. Gideon, would you..."

Stein abruptly holds up a hand.

"Rip," he says again. "Also, perhaps not a good idea."

The captain stops in the middle of taking another drink, brow furrowed. "What?"

"Ms. Jiwe came by here right after you left. I don't think she even saw me." He smiles a little. "It seems approaching the place where so very much went to hell last time is causing people—even those who weren't there that time-to think about all manner of might-have-beens. She was looking for Mr. Rory.

"At any rate, they left together. And I don't think you should bother them."

Rip blinks again. The, suddenly, he sinks into his desk chair, throws his head back and laughs.

"Bloody hell, when did my ship turn into the Love Boat?" He waves his drink in the air. "Rhetorical question; don't answer."

Stein smiles again, but doesn't. He raises his glass to the one other man on the ship who has experience of matrimony, and they both drink.

For a few minutes, they do so in silence.

"That took a lot of bravery," Rip says finally, "showing up here among 'the enemy' for her. Mr. Snart and I have had our differences, and I certainly hadn't had much reason to think kindly of this version, but...those _were_ the actions of a man in love."

He studies his glass as though he expects to find answers in it.

"And neither of those relationships can end well," he continues, tone melancholy. "Mr. Snart will have to forget and go back to 2013...and die at the Oculus. Ms. Jiwe lives in the 1940s, and history tells us she will have a daughter there; Mr. Rory, strictly speaking, is about 50 years younger than she is. And there is not a damned thing I can do about it, not for any of them."

Stein sighs over his own glass, studying the progression of equations on the glass wall before him.

"I know that," he says. "And even worse, I think...so do they."

* * *

Staring out the Waverider's forward window at the wreckage of the Vanishing Point is even more difficult than she'd expected. There's more there than she would have thought, actually, twisted formations and walkways of the Time Masters' odd building materials and the shells of buildings. She traces a fingertip along the window's surface, wondering precisely where...

A warmth at her shoulder tells her that someone has come up behind her, and she turns her head a little to see Mick staring out the window too, a frown on his face. His eyes catch Sara's, and after a moment, they both smile sadly at each other.

There's a whisper of movement, and Leonard approaches the window on Sara's other side, frowning at the view. Rip is next to him, frowning as well.

"There's not a single vestige of the wellspring," he muses. "Not that I can see. Gideon, any sign of temporal energy?"

"There is a...channel, for lack of a better word...where the wellspring _used_ to be," the AI says after a moment. "But it is more notable for the absence of energy than energy itself. But, captain, I am detecting..."

The Legion's ship, matte black and ominous, flows out of the time steam behind them. She hears Leonard's muttered reaction, Rip's oath...and then Thawne's face appears on the Waverider's viewscreen.

"Ah, the 'Legends,' back to the scene of their crime," he muses, smiling. "How convenient. I must thank you for showing us the way here.

"Now, let us get settled, and then we must talk..."

The screen goes clear again, showing the dark ship looming over them on its way to the wreckage. The bridge of the Waverider is silent, but now everyone is staring at the former Legion member in their midst.

Sara whips around to stare at him, too, heart breaking at the thought that he...but her doubts vanish as quickly as they appeared at the expression on his face.

"I didn't." His tone is intense. "I didn't. Sara, you have to believe me. It was gone. I dug it _out_ of my arm. Your AI..."

Rip stops cursing a moment to raise his voice. "Gideon! I thought you said Mr. Snart was not carrying a tracking device."

"I said I could not detect one." The ship's tone is displeased. "However, I am now sensing a signal emanating from Mr. Snart's collarbone. It is...possible...it could be a sort of organic device..."

"Well, it's sort of a moot point at the moment!" Ray yells, grabbing a jump seat as the ship is buffeted by the other ship's close passage. "Can we just get out of here? Just turn around and leave? If they don't have the time drive..."

"Gideon!" Rip reaches out, pulls himself back into the captain's chair. "As the man said!"

"Their ship is causing a sort of temporal...dissonance, captain." The AI sounds personally offended by the matter. "The time stream is very unstable. I cannot take us back in there without the very real possibility of destruction."

Into the quiet, Mick Rory says simply, "Fuck."

Rip sighs. "Truer words, Mr. Rory. Well," he says, "I guess we hear what he has to say."

* * *

It doesn't take long for both ships to settle on to the darkened surface of the wreckage—during which time Gideon confirms the presence of a small organically based device embedded in (and nearly indistinguishable from) the bone of Leonard's collarbone. Until the Legion ship drew near, however, even her scans had not detected a signal.

No one bothers to question, though, whether he was aware of it. His fury is unmistaken...and downright palpable as he glares at the Thawne's image on the screen.

The team has gathered on the bridge for this...conversation...and Sara makes a point to stand with her shoulder to the crook's—only fitting, she thinks, since she's the reason he's here. To her surprise, Rip stands on his other side, arms folded, eyes cool. The rest of the team is arrayed around them: Mick and Amaya, Nate and Ray, Stein and Jax.

The speedster seems unimpressed. Merlyn stands, smirking, on one side; Darhk, impassive, on the other. There are people behind them on the screen, but she doesn't recognize any of them. More goons, presumably.

Thawne gives them a slow, scary smile. "Hello...Legends," the man says, eyes going to his runaway Legion recruit. "And Mr. Snart, of course.

"For what it's worth, you shouldn't blame him," he adds, gaze moving to the rest of the team. "He is mainly guilty of being a chess piece, really. I knew he'd been a member of your team, but didn't return to the timeline in 2016. I found that...interesting."

He shrugs. "Once I observed a little, though, it seemed quite likely even the earlier version might have an interest in rejoining, given sufficient...motivation." His eyes flick to Sara. His smile is cold. "Once there was enough bait, I figured you'd bring everything I needed right here for me. Quite efficient, really."

Sara closes her eyes a long moment, throttling down rage. She hears a noise beside her, and glances over to see the crook in question with his eyes narrowed and his fists clenched at his sides. The look in his eyes is...the last time she saw that expression, the Oculus blew up and the Time Masters died.

Thawne seems aware of that, but his smile just grows. "I require your time drive," he says simply. "The one on this rather...rudimentary...ship is quite inadequate for my purposes. And your AI. Yes...Gideon. You have 12 hours to hand those things over.

"Oh. And Mr. Snart. We'd like him back, too."

 _What?_ She glances over again, but Leonard just looks as surprised as she feels, for the second or two before his expression clouds again.

Rip clears his throat. "And why," he questions mildly, "would we want to do that?"

"Well, in return, you take _this_ ship and leave. It's not a bad deal, really. I can't guarantee anything after that, but...well, you'll have a chance. I imagine you've figured out that you can't leave at the moment; so it's really your only option."

"And if we don't hand over those things?"

"If you don't...well. We come get them," Thawne leans forward, eyes gleaming. "And there's an exceptionally good chance one or both of our ships are damaged or destroyed, and then _no one_ has a way home."

"What _possible_ purpose can that serve?" Rip's tone is cold. Thawne ignores the words, although Merlyn behind him smirks a little wider.

"Twelve hours," he repeats, and the screen goes blank.

Ray whips around and stares at Rip, eyes flicking to Sara and Leonard.

"We can't let those three get ahold of something like the Oculus," he says. "And Snart came to us in good faith. We can't turn him over."

Other voices rise in agreement. Leonard turns his head to take in the people around him, and his expression is a cross between amazement and bemusement. Sara, watching, can't tell if he's more baffled by the team's notable lack of self-preservation or the simple, universal agreement that they will _not_ hand their once-and-future teammate over to his former compatriots.

Rip holds up his hands for quiet, and while it takes a moment, he eventually gets it.

"So," he says, looking at the team, "is it a consensus, then? We stay? Do our best to fight them off, make sure they can't recreate the Oculus, no matter how they're ultimately planning to do that?"

Stein steps forward and clears his throat. "Well. I'm pretty sure I speak for all of us," he glances around, "when I say that there is no way I would trust the people I care for to a world in which that lot has control over time itself. We unintentionally made this possible. We have to make sure that, whatever they have planned, it doesn't happen. Preferably, that it _never_ can."

Jax steps up to his side. "I'm with Gray," he says. "Couldn't live with myself if I ran."

Amaya has her arms folded and her chin tilted up. "I may have come along on this mission because of some...misconceptions...about your methods and some of your members." She glances at Mick, who raises an eyebrow at her, then away. "I expected a disaster. I found a team."

"Well. _Sometimes_ a disaster," Mick mutters, but smiles when she glares at him.

"This is why I fight," she says. "To stop people like Thawne and his ilk. I would never run now."

Mick steps up beside her, hand on his heat gun. "Pussycat has it right," he says. "Plus, we don't leave one of our crew behind. Never again."

He looks at Leonard, who stares back, brow furrowed.

One by one, they chime in and, as Sara could have predicted, the decision is unanimous: They fight.

Rip nods, then, decisively. "And Mr. Snart?"

"What?"

"We can certainly use your continued help. What do you say? Willing to be a Legend again?"

Leonard stares at the captain for a long moment, then glances back over his shoulder, eyes lighting on Mick, then on Sara. She meets his eyes across the room...and sees them crinkle at the corners just a little, before he turns back to Rip.

"I'm in," he says simply. "Never liked the idea of someone else pulling my strings."

"Don't we know it, Mr. Snart. Don't we all know it."


	5. Clarke's Third Law

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little more shameless self-promotion: I, my story "If I Never," the series it's part of, and a few other things I've worked on are up for the first CaptainCanary Fanfiction and Visual Art awards. Voting is nearly done, but you still have a little more time at captaincanaryawards.tumblr.com (backslash) vote. So go vote! There are so many talented people in this fandom.

Rip and Mick, as the two people on board with any understanding of how an AI might be separated from its ship, get to work on measures to make sure that's even more unlikely. Meanwhile, Jax and Ray set to reinforcing the doors any invading force would have to pass to get to the time drive.

Everyone else, Rip recommends, should simply get as much rest as possible—and then be ready to fight, because no one expects Thawne to abide by his word and wait the full span of time.

Well. There's rest and then there's _rest_ , Sara figures.

They're sprawled in her...their...bunk a few hours into the waiting game, his face turned into her collarbone, her arms around his back, her fingers tracing slow lines up and down his spine, both of them covered in a fine sheen of sweat. In another circumstance, she thinks, she'd feel utterly content and sated.

In the circumstance they have, she can barely keep her mind from running away with her.

"Why do they want you?" she says suddenly, voicing what she's been wondering for hours. "Any idea?"

Leonard shifts, then props himself up on an elbow and regards her, blue eyes considering.

"No clue," he says. "I'd say revenge, but it looks like I've been set up the entire time." His mouth twists in a combination of anger and amusement. "Apparently why I was recruited in the first place. And here I thought I was just the best I am at what I do."

She can't help it: She laughs at his mock-wounded pride. He smiles, a little, running a hand over her shoulder, before continuing.

"It was never the most formal of arrangements. Now I'm wondering if every single thing they had me do or steal was just because of this," he muses. "This...master plan, whatever it is."

The light touch is so distracting. "Butterfly wings," she murmurs.

"Hmm?"

"A conversation I overheard Rip and Stein having once. About how the tiniest tweaks to the timeline can add up to big changes. If one variable had been different, that day at the compound—if Ray hadn't gotten hurt, if you hadn't hidden in the same room I was in, if I hadn't...well-we probably wouldn't be here. And if we hadn't both been in New York that day in the 1920s. London in 1944. Coast City in 2013."

"You think it was all to make sure we would...I don't...it's not..." His voice trails off as he thinks about it, frowning, before shaking his head and meeting her eyes again.

"I don't...usually do things like that...this..."

"I know." She sighs, fingertips catching on one of the scars on his back. "I normally wouldn't have just...in another time and place, I wouldn't...but I just couldn't let the chance go. And look where it got us."

But his fingertips are on her lips, and the look in his eyes silences her self-recriminations.

"Well," he says, the casualness of his tone jarring with the expression, "guess I do owe them something. How annoying."

He leans back down to kiss her; she wraps her arms around his shoulders...

And rest will still have to wait a while yet.

* * *

"Mr. Snart is the key."

Rip blinks as he enters his study again. "What? Martin. What did I say about getting some rest?"

But the scientist shakes his head in a quelling manner as he continues to study the figures on the display in front of him.

"This is more important. This is _far_ more important." He turns to face the captain. "Rip, this is going to sound absolutely bizarre. This is beyond theory, beyond any sort of..."

"All right, all right, I get that. What is it?"

Stein takes a deep breath. "Arthur C. Clarke."

"Excuse me?" Rip waves a hand as Stein starts to repeat the name. "I know who the man is. Met him once, actually. But I fail to see what he has to do this situation."

"Clarke's third law. " Stein points at the captain expectantly.

" 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is...indistinguishable from magic.' " Rip frowns. "I'm not following."

"Let me start at the beginning..."

"A good place, yes."

"I was wondering, what possible reason could they have for requiring Mr. Snart's presence _with_ the time drive and Gideon? Here, of all places?" Stein turns away from the numbers, starts to pace. "I started thinking...what if...what if...Damien Darhk, who, by all accounts, knew a great deal about magic _before_ acquiring this idol I've heard about...what if he, Merlyn, and Thawne are trying to create the Oculus—a piece of technology, but one we don't really understand-through that sort of ritual? Channeling temporal energy as though it's magical energy, _with_ technology?

"Look, I don't pretend to completely understand the subject," he adds. "I _am_ a man of science. But it all seems to come down to energy. The Darhk from our time used the potential energy, really, of blood and human lives, converted into power. Well, what if the same is true of temporal energy, in this case?"

Rip moves nearer, frowning. "But..this is not the same...oh, go on."

"Mr. Snart, the one in 2016, died blowing up the Oculus," Stein continues. "Which we all know. He was standing right at ground zero when the wellspring blew, unmooring time, destroying...largely destroying...the Vanishing Point and the Time Masters. It was a tremendous release of energy, in a place where, at the time, _there was no time_.

"Now, if you can accept a sort of potential _temporal_ energy—Mr. Snart, even this one, who hasn't even done that yet, but will, could be full of it."

Even under these circumstances, Rip can't resist a snort. Stein gives him a wry look, but continues.

"Think about what happened when Kendra ultimately killed Savage, that release of energy," he says. "Multiply by...millions. Billions. Now, imagine you can channel that. Harness it."

By this point, Rip is staring at him in horror.

"It makes a certain amount of sense," the captain says. "God help me, but it does. And you believe they may be able to use the time drive and, somehow, Gideon, to...what? Create something to harness that power? A new Oculus device."

"Yes. With the...memory, for lack of a better word...of the empty channel of the wellspring here. It is possible." Stein hesitates. "And there's more."

"Of course there is. Go on."

"Well, if there's one thing that's a common thread throughout human history, for whatever reason, it's that there's more power in a willing sacrifice." He sighs. "Which Mr. Snart _was_ the first time he was here. And if we can accept magic itself as a factor here...well, why not that?"

"You think...they'll want to see that he is again?" Rip pauses in thought. "But...what could possibly...especially if he's _dead_..."

"Rip..." Stein holds up a hand. His left. "What would make _you_ do it?"

The captain stares at him, then lets out a breath. "Aaaahhhh. Yes." He drags his hands through his hair, closes his eyes for a long, long moment...and opens them and then meets the scientist's gaze.

"I think," he says slowly, "that I know how we're going to have to play this. And may God have mercy on my soul."

* * *

When Sara wakes, Leonard is gone.

There's no real concern in her, not at first. She vaguely remembers him rising at some point due to a quiet request from Gideon, but since no one bothers to rouse _her_ , she figures the brain trust just wants to interrogate him again...and rolling over, goes back to sleep.

Upon waking, she checks the time—still hours left in Thawne's ultimatum—showers and pulls on her White Canary leathers, tucking weapons away and running down the usual pre-battle checklist in her head—until she's interrupted by the sound of running footsteps, right outside her door.

"Sara!" Mick's voice. "Get out here! Now!"

"What's going on?"

"When did Snart leave?"

"When did...Mick! Tell!" Moving faster, she stows the rest of her knives, grabs a gun and her staff, and opens the door...to be met with Mick Rory, face impassive, but eyes full of too many emotions to name.

"He fuckin' _gave himself up._ That asshole gave himself up," he tells her. " And I don't know what Darhk is doing out there, but it's nothing good."


	6. If I'm Going to Go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am beyond honored that I've won a few of the first CaptainCanary Fan Fiction and Visual Arts Awards! (Best Long One-Shot for "Black Knight, White Knight," shared with LarielRomeniel and IceBlueRose; Best Series for Time After Time; Best Destiny Fix-It for "If I Never" and Best Leonard Author!) Check out all the winners at captaincanaryawards.tumblr.com.

When they all boil out of the Waverider, Leonard is standing on a broad spar of wreckage, out over the abyss, eyes closed. Darhk is next to him, murmuring to himself, a wicked-looking knife in the other. Next to him, on a sort of plinth, sits the Waverider's time drive and another device crowned with a flickering light, connected into a contraption that looks unnervingly like the original Oculus device.

Between that pair and the ships stands Thawne, arms folded, a slight smile on his face. He watches in amusement as Sara checks her headlong rush toward her lover, Mick's hand coming down on her shoulder in support.

"Fortunately for you," he tells them, "Mr. Snart had a change of heart. I think he originally planned to do it to give you the chance to get away—how  _heroic_ —but when he learned our plans, he had a request. I am not unreasonable, given the sacrifice he has to make. So, we made a deal." He smiles at Leonard, who glares back.

"Remember, Thawne," he says, voice audible in the odd acoustics of the Vanishing Point. "My sister has a good life. My father is not a part of it. A normal life. And so does Mick. No fires. None of the crap he went through. He gets a chance." He meets his sometime partner's eyes across the gap, impassive, then looks at Sara.

And his eyes.  _His eyes_.

She can't breathe.

"Len," she whispers. "No."

"And Sara," he continues. "When you remake time with this Oculus thing, she's to be safe. And happy. No shipwrecks, no islands, no arrows. And she has her sister. Alive."

Thawne laughs.

"Such small things you ask for, Mr. Snart," he says in a rather indulgent tone. "Well. If that leads you to be here willingly…yes, of course. Given that the alternative was drugging you senseless and dragging you out here, and this could be so much more  _effective_ …we'll take it.

"The sacrifice, and the channel, for power. A time drive created by the Time Masters as a sort of harness. And Gideon—hello, Gideon, do you remember me?-as an interface. It's not so different from how the original Oculus was created...but that, that is a tale for another day."

"I do  _not_ know you." Hearing Gideon's voice echoing out here is unnerving, to say the least. Or maybe it's just that the AI herself sounds unnerved.

"Ah. No matter. Damien! Are you ready?"

Darhk ignores him but slowly raises the knife. Thawne nods. Leonard tenses, but doesn't move.

"I think," he says slowly, "that there's one thing you're forgetting, though."

"And what is that, Mr. Snart?"

Leonard slowly turns his head to gaze at Thawne.

"Well…" he says slowly, "if I'm going to go...it's damn well not going to be like  _this_!"

And as Darhk's knife flashes down, the crook throws himself backward, catching himself at the very edge of the spar, as a minute figure soars out of the pocket of his parka, exploding back to normal size and aiming his photon cannons straight at Darhk's face.

Thawne howls in rage and flickers into motion, but Leonard catches the cold gun Ray flings toward him and aims it at the speedster, who turns aside at the last possible moment. Out of nowhere, another blur crashes into Thawne: Amaya, hidden under the spirit of the chameleon, now channeling the spirit of the cheetah. Both of them zip back to firmer footing, barely visible. Ray, now flying up and over the fight, stoops to grab the time drive and the flickering box, making a beeline back to the Waverider.

People are now moving out of the Legion's ship: the goons Sara had noticed earlier. They're met by Nate, Mick and Rip…although the latter soon peels off to run toward a dark-clad figure, barely dodging an arrow as he does so.

Sara bites her lip as Leonard runs toward her, readying her staff as Darhk, who'd mostly dodged Ray's blast, regains his feet. As the crook reaches her, he grabs her arm and plants a quick kiss on her lips before moving next to her and opening fire with his cold gun, the rush of blue-white energy causing Darhk to stop in his tracks.

"You idiot!" she yells at the crook, relief and adrenaline coloring her voice.

"Yeah, well, talk to your captain. It was  _his_ idea!"

"Rip! I am going to  _kill_ you later!"

"Ms. Lance, provided we all survive this battle, we can discuss my fate at a later time!" Rip is back near them. From the corner of her eye, she sees the burst of light that is Firestorm, presumably on Merlyn's tail…and, she observes, keeping him away from the ships, and escape.

Minutes later, though, the Waverider shakes and starts to rise, slowly. It doesn't fully take off, but maintains a low position over the wreckage.

"Who's flying the ship?" Sara yells.

"Gideon! We didn't send them the full version. Rip and Stein found a way to sort of fake it." Ray yells back over his comm. "While she's probably still integrating things, she's OK. She won't use weapons, because, well, small shooting gallery, but she can get herself and the time drive out of reach."

"Good!" The cold gun can only fire a continual blast for so long, and Darhk has started his approach again, watching her narrowly. "Ray, I think the others could stand some help. Len…you too."

"Sara…"

"They still want to kill you here and he's the one who knows how to do it so that bad things..worse things...happen. Go!"

So, with the briefest touch on her elbow, he goes. And then Darhk is rushing her, pulling a sword from a scabbard at his hip, the same weapon he's fought her with before, and the battle is joined.

Neither of them speak. Neither of them need to. League-trained, both of them, with too much history in common- in a myriad of ways.

She may not, she thinks, kill him. But only one of them will walk away.

* * *

Running away from Sara Lance—something he probably should have done months ago, he thinks wryly—is one of the hardest things he's ever had to do.

But she's right.

And somewhere out here in this godforsaken wasteland-where, Thawne has told him, he's doomed to die in one way or another-is the rest of this motley sort of team he's fallen in with. When they stood up for him, they became part of his crew. You don't let your crew down.

And speaking of which...

Pausing and turning to scan for the flicker of the fire gun Mick has somehow acquired—it's fitting, really—he instead sees the other woman from the ship, the one that his sometime-partner has watched with such a strangely unMick-like affection. She's faltered, eyes closed and breathing ragged as she collects herself.

Thawne is nowhere in sight.

The time working with the speedster has had him looking obsessively for tells...signs the damnably fast psychopath is nearby. And it may be his imagination, but there's almost a certain...whine...when the speedster is approaching, something just almost beyond the edge of his hearing, but...

He listens. Still nothing.

But there's one of the mercenaries Merlyn had recruited to be part of this venture (bribing them, he now knows, with a key role and much fortune in their vaunted little new world order), and he's somehow made it this far away from the ship, and he's nearly to the woman and...

There is no point on wasting cold-gun charge on him. One step, two, and he's floored the man with a right to the jaw, letting him crumble to the ground

The woman jumps back, just a little, hand going to the necklace at her throat before she subsides, eyes just a little bit leery.

"You all right?" he asks, a bit curtly.

"I am." She does a credible job of collecting herself, straightening regally to eye him for a moment. "Thank you."

"Welcome. Thanks for the assist earlier."

The woman—Vixen—studies him, an oddly uncertain expression on her face. "You are not," she says in a voice that can't quite hide its incredulity, "quite as I had imagined."

"Yeah, well, it's been a weird few months." He sighs at the understatement, turning to hunt for Mick again—and catches a flicker of flame out of the corner of his eye. He starts toward the other man, then pauses and looks back at Vixen, tipping his head a little in invitation.

The woman actually smiles at him, just a bit, before raising a hand to her necklace again...and with the faint, barely heard scream of an eagle, rises into the air and soars off toward the ships.

"Weird," he repeats, shaking his head. "Right."

But he follows.

This new version of Mick may be unnerving in a few ways, but they still seem to work well together—even better, perhaps, than in the old days. In silence, they fall into a pattern, back to back, laying down a barrier of fire and ice and keeping anyone from getting into the Legion's ship.

"So, where'd you get the gun?" he asks over the crackle of his own weapon, pitching his voice to carry.

Mick turns, fires, grunts. Some things haven't changed. "You."

Leonard sighs. "And where did _I_  get the gun?"

"Hmmm. Spoilers." The bastard actually turns to him and smiles. "You'll figure it out."

He rolls his eyes, then turns to look for a new target.

There isn't one.

The mercenaries are all down or surrendered. The shrinking guy and the captain have Merlyn in restraints, kneeling by their ship. And, as he gazes back toward the spar, he sees that Darhk is also down, Sara kneeling by him-tired and injured, perhaps, but alive. He lets out a long, slow breath of relief.

But there's no sign of Thawne.

And Thawne is going to be  _pissed_.

And Thawne, pissed, is going to hurt people.

And Thawne is likely to be especially pissed at  _him_. And he knows where it will hurt most...

Mick says something to him, but he ignores the question, starting toward Sara, breaking into a jog and then a run. He's no speedster, not by a long shot, but he has a bad feeling about this and sometimes foresight can make up for speed.

He's just about there when he hears the whine.

* * *

She nearly kills him anyway.

Darhk is old, and canny, and skilled, but Sara is young, and motivated, and skilled. Later, analyzing, she'll pick out what she did right and what he did wrong at precisely the applicable moments...but for now, it's enough to feel the pommel of his own sword crashing into his jaw, her knee into his chest as she takes him down, the knife slicing through the air toward his neck...

It flickers through her head, everything that's brought her here, to this moment, the Gambit and the League and the Pit and Laurel and Leonard and Savage and...all the butterfly wings that pattern our days, that make us who we are...

And she pulls the blow.

Breathing heavily, he stares at the unconscious form of the man who'd taken—who will take-something so very precious from her, and she just feels...numb. She should feel more, she thinks.

But numb...numb will do.

She draws a deep breath and raises her head.

And it all happens in a fraction of a instant.

She sees a flicker of motion, struggles to her feet, bringing her staff up and starting an attack even though she knows it can't possibly...

And then Leonard is there, somehow, diving in front of her, gun up and firing...

Right at Thawne.

The cold gun was built for one thing, and one thing alone, no matter what the uses he's put it to in past, present, and future: to stop speedsters. And Cisco Ramon does his work  _well_.

Far too lost in anger and his own headlong rush to even turn aside, Eobard Thawne...freezes, coming to a halt not three inches from the pair he'd used most in his play to be a master of time.

Sara could still pull the attack she'd started, but she doesn't bother. Her staff whips out, connects…

And the ice-coated figure of the speedster cracks free, slides toward the edge of the wreckage…and over, tumbling down, down into the abyss.

And so passes Eobard Thawne, Reverse-Flash, murderer of Nora Allen and countless others.

No one mourns him.


	7. It's All Over

In the end, Sara doesn't kill Rip. Neither does Mick, although it's a near thing there for a few minutes.

The captain, talking quickly, tries to lay out how Stein worked out the Legion's plan, how he'd made the dangerous call to ask Leonard to play along and how he'd chosen to keep it among a smaller group to make sure Sara and Mick's reactions, especially, kept Thawne fooled.

Sara knows she should be furious. But, ultimately, there's just too much relief, and too much to do as they deal with the aftermath of the battle and all the cleanup that entails.

Mick, after some perusal of the Legion ship's controls and systems, concludes that it's not so different from the ship he flew as Chronos—a good thing, as they've found themselves with a surplus of prisoners to transport.

The unconscious Darhk is given a rapid (and none-too-gentle) once-over in the medbay to make sure Sara has done no permanent damage, then drugged to the gills, and dumped in the Waverider's brig, while Merlyn is sent to the Legion ship's. The latter will be remanded to the custody of Team Arrow back in 2017, along with the surviving mercenaries.

Thea, Sara thinks, may have a few more things to say to her father. Preferably with pointy objects in hand.

Stein has expressed interest in taking a few more readings with the Waverider's equipment at the Vanishing Point, which has them all waiting for another day or so to take off. Even with the very valid reasons in mind, it's tough, knowing that Darhk is alive and will be returned to his own time in more or less one piece. His presence on the ship that's become her home has her...restless...and Gideon has requested she refrain from training for a day or two, giving a few cracked ribs and a broken wrist more time to heal even after superficial medbay repair.

The AI has also requested she—and Leonard, who'd wrenched his knee in his headlong lunge to fire at Thawne—refrain from certain other recreational activities for that time. Sara has no intention of abstaining for long, but she'll give it a little time, anyway.

Still. She's restless. And she has never been the queen of good decisions.

So she goes to see the man who had her killed.

"So, what brings you here today, Sara? Gloating? That's not like you."

Malcolm Merlyn is sitting on the floor of the brig, legs crossed beneath him, looking for all the world like he's meditating in the most comfortable of surroundings instead of on cold, bare metal. He opens an eye and regards her, waiting for an answer.

"Just making sure you're still here," she tells him, checking her hip against the wall and folding her arms. "You're like a cockroach, Merlyn. You always seem to find a way to survive and slither out of trouble."

"Nothing wrong with being a survivor." He opens the other eye and smirks at her. "Also, that's somewhat ironic, coming from you."

"Never said it wasn't."

They study each other for a moment or two, White Canary and Dark Archer. Sara considers and discards a few comments, then simply shakes her head and straightens to leaves.

"I would have made sure they did it, you know," Merlyn tells her.

"Excuse me?"

"I would have made sure they gave your crook what he asked for." The former Ra's al Ghul shrugs. "I _am_ a man of my word. And, well..." His mouth tightens. "...I can understand it."

She doesn't know she's going to ask until she does. "So, what _did_ Thawne promise to get you to work with him on this? It doesn't seem like quite your style."

But she already knows the answer.

"My wife. My son. Maybe a few other things, but... well. Mostly those." He gives her a tight smile. "Tell me you can't understand that. You're about to lose _him_ again, aren't you? The thief? You have to put him back in his own time just like you have to put Darhk back, or risk the timeline we both came from. And then he'll die. Tell me...if there was a chance to get around that, wouldn't you at least think about taking it?"

She doesn't answer the question.

She doesn't need to, no more than he did. And he knows it.

"Goodbye, Merlyn."

* * *

They take Merlyn and the others back to 2017 first. Sara stays on the Waverider, avoiding Oliver and her father and everyone else, leaving it to Ray to explain the basics and prevail upon them for assistance. She'll go back soon, she tells herself. Just not...now.

Mick and Rip stow the Legion ship...somewhere. They seem to think it's best that as few people as possible know about its existence.

They drop Darhk back in 1948. Although Mick suggests it (eagerly), they don't roll the man off the Waverider's hatch while the ship is still in flight-but they don't take much care with him, either, leaving him propped up in the townhouse he owns after dosing him thoroughly with amnesia drugs.

Amaya, also offered the chance to return to her time at this point, demurs. She does not look at Mick. He does not look at her. Sara shakes her head.

The trip to 2013 takes longer than it should. If she didn't know better, she'd almost suspect Gideon of stalling, dragging it out. Maybe the AI is. Certainly, every other member of the team seeks Leonard out during the trip to say at least a few words before he's...gone. She usually leaves his presence for these often-awkward interludes, returning to find him somewhat bemused, staring after the well-wisher with an odd expression.

When Mick stops by, she leaves for a few hours, sparring with Amaya and actually eating dinner with the others in the galley. At her return, Mick is gone and Leonard's pacing the room, thoughtful and restless. She'd give a lot to ask him about what they'd talked about...but she doesn't.

She's telling him things about those five months in 2016 that she knows she probably shouldn't, too.

She tells him about the rooftop. About "Am I the only one on this ship who could really use a drink?" and the bar in St. Roch and "Love Will Keep Us Together."

She tells him about Russia, about 2046, about card games and having each other's backs and "About you?"

Choking on the words, she even tells him about " me and you" and "what the future might hold."

He listens, brow furrowed, and it breaks her heart even more to see him trying to commit it all to a memory which will soon, of necessity, be wiped out.

They play cards. They make love. They don't discuss what's going to happen next. And then they're there. Central City, 2013.

And it's over.

It's _all over_.

* * *

The evening of May 19, 2013, is chilly and brisk, unseasonably so. She doesn't mind that. It seems fitting, really.

It's a good walk from the field where the Waverider is parked to the location where one Leonard Snart was staying when a speedster from the future recruited him, he thought, to steal things. She doesn't mind that, either.

Just another second. Just another minute. Just another hour.

The safe house isn't much more than a converted warehouse, but there's a corner of it, an apparent former office, that's been transformed into a sparse living area of sorts—a kitchenette, a bed, a desk and any number of full bookcases. She glances around as he ushers her in, hangs up his jacket with a sigh, and slowly turns back to her.

She avoids his eyes, but in the pocket of her jacket, there's a vial with one white pill in it.

Rip had spent days closeted in the medbay lab in communication with Gideon, trying, he says, to formulate something that will leave a little less of an absolute black hole in Leonard's memory while still wiping out the things he needs to forget, like time travel and the Vanishing Point. And them. And her.

This is the result. She slowly removes it now, rolling it between her fingers and trying desperately to think of a way out.

Leonard reaches out and captures her restless hands between his, gently pulling her down to sit with him on the bed.

"Well," he tells her, and she can't even begin to read what she hears in his voice, "I guess this is goodbye-for you, anyway. 'See you later,' for me."

They've said all they really needed to say on the ship, but… "Why aren't you fighting this? You've butted heads with Rip from the day you met. You never, ever take anything he says on faith. That's not you. _Why aren't you fighting this?!_ "

She curses the tiny quaver in her voice, even the edge of anger. But there's compassion in his eyes, and he still hasn't let go of her hands.

"I told your captain I wouldn't take it, actually," he tells her. "At first. I told him I'd refuse. But he—and your AI—both told me that if I don't, it could unravel everything. And they...well, they made a pretty damned good case."

A crooked smile. "I want to meet you again, Sara Lance. If this is how I get there, well..."

So, that's it then. She takes a shaky breath and, abruptly, makes a decision.

With the bottle in her pocket is a tiny additional item. Now, she pulls it up, hold it up. "Do you recognize this?"

He reaches out and takes the object, holding it up so that it catches the light: one small, silver pinkie ring.

"No," he tells her, unaware of how fast her heart is beating. "I don't. Isn't it yours?"

"Leonard…you told me, in 2016, that it was from the first job you pulled with Mick, when, despite all your planning, everything went sideways—and this is all you had to show for it. Are you saying that isn't true?"

"The thing about the job is true enough." He gives her a rueful smile. "But why the hell a pinky ring?"

And just like that, a suspicion is confirmed. She just stares at him a long moment, biting her lip, trying not to hope...

"Leonard, you told me that. You _did_. Mick thought it was the case, too. Why would you do that if it wasn't true?"

A long silence. He looks at the ring, then at her, and when he speaks again, his words are a statement, not a question.

"You're thinking it's a message."

"More like a…memory aid, what's the word?"

"A mnemonic."

"Right. I've been reading some of the memory studies Gideon has in her databanks, and sometimes something small will get through the drugs when something big won't. Keep it, use it as a mnemonic, use it to keep reminding yourself that…when we go to the Vanishing Point, there's a fail-safe at the Oculus. Bring something, have an escape route, it doesn't matter; you just need a way out. Sometimes things...go sideways..."

He starts to say something, but she puts her fingers to his lips before reaching for his hand, dropping the ring into the palm and folding his fingers around it.

"Find a way to live," she whispers. "Try to remember. Just…try."

He reaches for her, then, pulling her forward into his arms, his other hand tangling in her hair as he kisses her, and she wraps her arms around him, flesh and blood and bone and _alive_ and she doesn't want to let go, but...

The pill's also a tranquilizer, and it's supposed to be a pretty fast-acting one. She makes him lie down, and he drags her down with him, eliciting one last laugh. She props herself up an elbow and watches, biting her lip, as he holds the pill up in an ironic toast...and then pauses.

"I don't regret any of it," he tells her. "You know that, right?"

"You can't say that about things you haven't done yet."

The smile is sly and suggestive and maybe, maybe, just a little bit sweet under the habitual snark.

"Oh," he says, "I think maybe I can." And then he swallows the pill.

She watches his thoughtful expression, watches him blink as the drug kicks in, notes the change in his breathing.

Those remarkable blue eyes meet hers. "Sara," he whispers, "I..."

But his eyes close and this time, they don't open again. She waits a moment and then reaches out to touch his face, one more time.

"Sleep well, Len," she whispers. "I love you."

* * *

She leaves the safe house, locking the door behind her, and sets off back for the Waverider in the cool spring evening, arms wrapped around herself despite her jacket. At first, she's just numb, walking with shoulders hunched and eyes distant. Then, the truth starts to set in, that she's just said goodbye again, of her own free will and it's forever and...

"Hey."

She looks up, then, and sees the car pulled over to the curb not far ahead of her, and Mick Rory standing next to it.

He'd demurred when she asked if he wanted to go along too, saying he'd prefer to say any goodbyes at the Waverider. She knew he'd done it to give them their private farewell, and while she appreciates it, she knows it had to hurt. It's even rougher now, knowing that Leonard had chosen his path even knowing what will happen at the Oculus, chosen to make the decision twice, the second time with full forethought and knowledge.

She can see it in his eyes. Not the same as her feelings, no. But knowledge, and friendship lost and sacrifices made.

Amaya is standing just behind him, her eyes full of compassion, and Sara's abruptly sure who pushed Mick into coming here tonight, into waiting for her in the Central City night, making sure she's OK.

She starts to sigh, but it comes out as a sob, and with only a moment's hesitation, he takes a step forward and wraps his arms around her, pulling her forward so that her head is against his shoulder, and he holds her as she cries.

Amaya comes over and puts a gentle hand on her back and while it's not all right, it'll never be all right, at least she has her friends.

And the memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. 
> 
> One more chapter to go.


	8. Better Believe It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a few elements here I snitched from my story "Hell of a Thief." I liked the notion so much I had to expand on it. ;)
> 
> Thanks again to LarielRomeniel for the beta! This is a much better story (and series) because of her suggestions.

When they get back to the ship, the Waverider takes off immediately for the Temporal Zone. Sara's not sure if it's because Rip's concerned Leonard might remember something and come looking for them...or because he's worried she might change her mind and go back.

It doesn't matter. It's done.

As far as she knows, they don't have a concrete destination. Presumably, Gideon will go back to keeping an eye out of temporal anomalies and they'll simply go back to fixing them, with no Legion to worry about this time. It's good work, she knows. Necessary work. Work she can spend a lifetime doing, really, with good people beside her.

She keeps telling herself that.

She trains with Amaya and the others, drinks with Mick (ignoring the concern in his eyes), studies more about navigation and temporal theory with Rip (ignoring his, too). She watches movies with Jax, teases Ray, has at least one heart-to-heart with Stein. Very, very briefly, she considers jumping the still-nervous Nate for the sheer hell of it and to...prove to herself...

She's not sure what she'd be proving. Maybe the same thing she'd tried so hard to prove after the first time she'd lost Leonard...that she doesn't care.

But she did. And she does. (And Nate couldn't keep up with her anyway.)

Staring at the ceiling above her bunk while thinking it all over yet again, she's still glad she did what she did, that day in 2027. Even knowing it had been a set-up, even knowing she'd have to lose him all over again. Worth it.

Now, if she could just sleep a little bit better...

She's just starting, maybe, to drift off when the ship's comm jars her back to wakefulness.

"Sara, please come to the bridge."

There's...something...in Rip's tone, but she doesn't feel like parsing it out.

"If it's all the same, Rip, no thanks." He'd said "please," right? It's not an order.

"Blondie. Get to the bridge. I mean it." Mick's voice, and in it, also...something. Something that scares her, actually, and she's on her feet and dressing before she can really think more about it, stowing away a few weapons and running for the bridge.

The ship shakes, just a little, right before she gets there, and the first words out of her mouth are: "Did something just dock?"

Rip is perched in his captain's chair and the look on his face is...odd. There's an extra flash of...is that guilt?...as he sees her

"Yes," he says, in a voice that would seem curt if there wasn't something seething just under the surface. "A small jump ship. Mr. Rory and Dr. Palmer have gone to meet its...captain. The others are on the way to the bridge as well."

"What aren't you telling me, Rip?" She walks closer, unnerved by his tone. "That doesn't end well. That _never_ ends well."

But the captain looks at her, right at her, with eyes that are somber and a little distant.

"Trust me, Ms. Lance, you're going to find out soon enough," he says, "and I can only hope..."

"What is going on?" Amaya, followed by Stein, Jax and Nate, runs onto the bridge. "Did a ship just dock? What..."

But Rip holds up a hand, staring at the corridor that leads to the docking bay, and takes a deep breath as Ray bounds—there's really no better word for it—onto the bridge.

"Hey! Hey, guys! Look who it _is_! Sara..."

And behind him...

"It can't be." Her own voice sounds hollow in her ears. "It can't. How...how did you get a ship? How did you find..."

Leonard Snart stops dead in his tracks at the sight of her, staring at her like he can't quite believe his eyes. (She knows the feeling.) He looks just like she'd left him, asleep in 2013, blue eyes and widow's peak and even (she knows so well) those fine lines around eyes and mouth…

"Sara," he breathes, then stops as if he's not entirely sure what else to say.

Mick, walking beside him, glances at both of them, shakes his head, and keeps going to Sara's side.

"Blondie." His voice is serious, but she thinks he's as rattled as she is. "It's not...quite what you're probably thinking. Gideon?"

"This is the Leonard Snart we thought lost at the Oculus." The AI's tone is perturbed, as though she's annoyed by the error, and utterly unaware of the way she's making Sara's world tilt around her. "Not the one from 2013 who was recently returned there. His right forearm is of my make, and he has aged an equivalent amount of time to the rest of you. Perhaps he will tell us how that came about."

Yes, definitely perturbed, Sara thinks, distantly.

"How?"she asks again. _"How!_?"

Leonard takes another step forward, eyes on her face, then stops, looking around the room, apparently taking in all the shell-shocked expressions.

"Well," he drawls—and goddamn him yet again for being so very much the same. "It's sort of a long story. But I remembered the warnings about the Oculus."

His eyes go back to her again, a compass point to true north, but she's still absorbing his words...and all the meaning behind them.

"Are you telling me you _remembered_? You remembered all of us, from 2013? In 2016?"

But he's holding up a hand and shaking his head. "No. I originally remembered just...a long-term job that had gone sideways. But as time went on, things started leaking through, I guess you'd say. A feeling of déjà vu." He looks now at Rip...and nods to the captain with what is, surreally, a certain amount of respect in his eyes. "Thank you."

Now, everyone's eyes on are on Rip. Except for Leonard's, which are back on Sara.

She wants to kiss him until neither one of them can breathe. She wants to slap him. She wants to walk away and give him the slightest taste of what she's been feeling.

"Rip?" she just says. "Explain."

"Well. If there's one thing I've learned from you, and Mr. Snart, and Mr. Rory, it's that sometimes, rules are made to be broken." The captain is grinning, _grinning_ , now, as he hops down from his chair and extends a hand to Leonard—who, with a particularly bemused expression, shakes it.

"I met with him, a number of times, before we made it back to 2013. He pointed out to me that I couldn't be sure he _didn_ 't remember, in 2016," Rip continues. "And he was right. In fact, there are variables involving Mr. Snart that never did make a lot of sense; the timeline involving him seemed far more stable than it should have been, given...everything. Almost as if it had been set this way all along. And Gideon agreed.

"So, we...tinkered with the formula. A little. In a way that might let things eventually seep in." He smiles a little. "Not too much. Seems like we were right."

"Remarkable..." Stein is musing out loud. "So, you're saying this is apparently what was...meant to happen all along? This...time loop?"

The captain just holds out his hands and shakes his head. "It is impossible to say that with any amount of surety. Did the 2016 version of Mr. Snart always have this, as he says, déjà vu? I don't know. It seems that perhaps he did. Or did the timeline adjust itself and we aren't even aware of it? I don't know that either. Mr. Snart? How did it look to you, after you returned to 2013 and in 2016?"

Leonard shrugs, the same insouciant gesture those versions used.

"Well. Like I said, I woke up thinking I'd been involved in a long-term heist, something that had gone...sideways," he says, smirking a little. "Things were a little foggy and it really pissed me off. I thought I'd been drugged—didn't know how right I was. Wasn't much I could do about it, though, so I settled back into life as usual.

"But gradually, there were little things. In 2014, I saw a speedster in Central City...and I knew what he was and I didn't know how. I knew the cold gun and Mick's heat gun when I saw them." He shakes his head. "I actually didn't remember anything on the rooftop that day, when Rip made his pitch. That came after. Kept thinking I'd met everyone before. Knowing things about them I couldn't know." He looks at Mick. "That's why I changed my mind about going. I wanted to know what the hell was going on."

His friend grunts. "Always thought that was weird. Explains a lot."

But Leonard's eyes are glued to Sara again, and she's thinking back over everything and...

"That's how you knew. In Russia," she whispers. "I'd wondered. You said that wasn't me anymore and..."

"I knew it. Didn't know how I knew it. But I did." His mouth twists a little. "I _knew_ it'd kill you if you...did that. It was unnerving as hell. I didn't want to know. Even more, I didn't want to _care_.

"But I did. I knew. And I cared. And it kind of went from there."

He's looking at her with that expression in his eyes again, the one that's so soft and wondering, and she wants to just _fall_ again, but...

"That might explain a lot," she tells him, a little shortly. "But it doesn't really explain how you're here. Now. Alive, when we thought you'd died more than a year ago."

There's a flicker of understanding there before he closes his eyes a moment, and when he opens them again, he turns to survey the room, and the team, at large.

"It probably helped that, before you dropped me in 2013, _every single person_ on this ship tried to impress upon me what was going to happen at the Vanishing Point," he says wryly, "and tried to make sure I just might remember to have an out."

The team members, each of whom had known perfectly well they weren't supposed to give him any more details about his future, look guiltily—or not so guiltily-around the room. "Everyone?" Jax asks.

"Every single person." There's a genuine smile on his face now as he glances around the bridge. "Thanks…team."

His eyes flicker back to her, then. "As we got closer to going to the Vanishing Point, it was like an itch between my shoulder blades. I found a silver pinkie ring in my stuff and started wearing it, because I remembered that it was supposed to remind me of something. I even tried to run...but Stein had sent Jax off in the jump ship.

"But even before that, after seeing the Pilgrim working her teleportation trick, I lifted this from Mick's old Chronos gear in storage." He fishes in one of his jacket pockets, then holds up the gadget within. Mick takes a closer look, then shakes his head.

"Huh. I'd completely forgotten about that thing," he says. "But that's not a long-range teleporter...and where would you go to, anyway?"

"Took me a while to figure it out. And I still didn't know what I was supposed to be preparing for." Leonard shakes his head. "But when we were taking the time ships out at the Vanishing Point," he looks at Sara again, "I...managed to steer you away from one little jump ship—which didn't really matter, because it didn't have any weapons anyway. Set the teleport settings there. Just in case.

"I had to wait until the Oculus was going to go critical no matter what, then I teleported out to the ship and left in the opposite direction. When the wave of temporal energy hit me, I remembered...everything. Blacked out, actually, so it's a pretty good thing the ship had a decent autopilot."

Silence. Then: "Astonishing," Stein says into the silence. "And where have you been all this time?"

"Oh... knew I couldn't come back until after.. _.I_...was gone." He smiles a little. "And I had a jump ship. I've been...doing this and that. You'll see, soon." He surveys them. "So, what do you say? Am I back on the team?"

"Of course," Stein says, over the top of Jax, who chimes in with an enthusiastic, "Yeah, man!" alongside Ray's "heck yeah!" Mick's pleased noise and Amaya's dignified "Of course." Rip shakes his head in amusement, but waits for all that to die down before adding his own 2 cents.

"I _think_ I speak for us all when I say, welcome back, Mr. Snart," he says. "But I don't think I'm the most important vote here."

Leonard's eyes are back on her and he nods. Sara's distantly aware that the others are leaving the bridge, giving them some time and a little privacy, but she's too busy figuring out how she feels, what she wants to happen here.

He takes another step closer, and he's close enough to touch, now. Her hands are still tucked under her elbows and she knows her body language is probably pretty standoffish. But she just can't believe it, quite yet. Can't believe he's here, and he's not...

"I'm sorry."

It startles a little huff of unamused laughter out of her. "For what?"

"Hm. Bunch of things. I have a list," he tells her, quite seriously. "But especially pulling the cold gun on you. I knew something was going to happen, but I didn't remember quite what, or what I was supposed to do, and I wanted to get _you_ out of there." He shrugs. "I've been waiting a long time to tell you that. I'm sorry."

"It's OK." _That_ 's what he's been waiting a long time to tell her?

He moves a step closer, eyes still locked on hers. She takes a deep breath, then closes them, trying to get some breathing room from her own feelings,

She feels him touch her arm, very gently, can feel the nearness of him, so warm for someone who used to pride himself such on a chilly persona.

"How well did you remember, when you mentioned 'what the future might hold?' " she asks him quietly. "Did you know that, in _my_ future, I was going to..."

"No. _No_. Just...like I said, an odd feeling of déjà vu. I was draw to you. It was...actually a bit unnerving, really." A tiny sound of amusement. Then a hesitation. "I meant it, though. About...me and you..."

She realizes, after a fraction of a second, that he's waiting. From the sound of his breathing, he's nervous about it, a thought that, oddly, charms her, just a little.

She lets out a long breath.

"I've said goodbye twice," she tells him, eyes still closed. "I can't...do it again."

An intake of breath, and then the light touch on her arm disappears.

"Right," he says after a moment. "Right. I...OK. I'm sorry, Sara."

It takes her a moment to register that he's stepped back, that he's turned to walk away, and her eyes fly open.

"You idiot, that's not what I meant!"

He stops in his tracks and turns back, and then she's there, she's grabbed two fistfuls of his jacket, she's yanking his mouth down to hers and kissing him for the first time, for him, since the Oculus. He tastes the same, mint, cool and sweet, and _him_ , and then his arms are around her and he's backing her up a step to brace them both against the captain's chair, and...

Distantly, she hears a squeak, quickly hushed, from the corridor, but she doesn't even care. Let the peanut gallery get an eyeful.

"Just don't do it again, OK?" she says into his collarbone after they finally part, breathing heavily and quite ready to head to...their, she supposes it is—yes, _their_...room. "Or I'll kill you myself."

She can feel his smile against her hair. "I love you, assassin."

"You better believe it...crook."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here we are. Thanks for reading! I'll finish the epilogue (titled, appropriately enough "Fix It") one of these days, but this stands on its own. 
> 
> I still think there's a lot about Leonard's time (first time? I hope!) on the Waverider that could be explained by a time loop of sorts. We shall see...


End file.
